The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard [Hardcover]

Anthony Alofsin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

A history of modernism in the teaching of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning at Harvard.

This remarkable volume tells the unique history of modernism as reflected in the teaching of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Tracing developments at the GSD, which was home from 1937 to 1952 of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Anthony Alofsin reveals that America had initiated its own modern agenda before the arrival of the European modernist ideology. Filled with archival photographs and plans that have never been published before, this book will be of great interest to students and professionals in the fields of art, architecture, and design, as well as to architectural historians. 20 color and 250 black and white illustrations; plans

Editorial Reviews

Review

[C]ompelling overall. First-hand, up-close, and in-depth examinations of the early American architecture, landscape, and city-planning schools as the complex entities they were during the first half of the twentieth century in America are sadly lacking. Alofsin's study decidedly raises the bar. Full of precise details, his prose is smooth, and the book is amply and informatively illustrated. (Brendan D. Moran - caa.reviews )

Alofsin does a fine job of introducing readers in the postmodern era to the social and political roots of [the] genre. (Laurel McSherry - Landscape Architecture )

Anthony Alofsin's excellent history of design education at Harvard portrays GSD culture with depth and detail. (Robert Taylor - ArchitectureBoston )

Anyone interested in the...question of what consituted “modern” in the first half of the 20th century, should read this book. (M. Frank, University of Massachusetts, Lowell )

About the Author

Anthony Alofsin is Roland Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393730484
• ISBN-13: 978-0393730487
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,083,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Perspective on Modernism, January 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard (Hardcover)

Modernism in architecture is so closely identified with a handful of hero figures (like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe) that we often forget that the real story behind its development is a complex and contentious one. In this wonderful and much-needed book, Anthony Alofsin deftly illustrates that the arrival of European architects in the U.S. in the 1930s cast a shadow over emerging progressive trends in American architectural design and education. At Harvard in particular, this led to an amnesia that convinced students and professors alike that it was Gropius who brought modern ideas to the Graduate School of Design when he began teaching there in 1937. "The Struggle for Modernism" shows clearly, though, that the kernels of these modern ideas were present in the Harvard design programs from their beginnings in 1900. It was not from the Bauhaus that Harvard developed its interdisciplinary approach to design that insisted on collaboration amongst architects, landscape architects, and city planners. Instead, it was Americans like Herbert Langford Warren, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., George Harold Edgell, and, most importantly, Joseph Hudnut who over decades created the influential and rigorous design programs. This is a fascinating and most welcome book that sheds much new light on a subject that many have incorrectly assumed was already well-understood. Highly recommended.